Tuesday, September 20th, 2016
A laser scanner mounted to ships and submarine vehicles is providing high-resolution images of underwater features, including shipwrecks. The ULS-500 PRO scanner from 2G Robotics uses a high-sensitivity, low-noise sensor to reach ranges previously unattainable with laser scanning, resolving fine-scale dimensional features from distances as far as 20 meters. The system was used offshore during
Wednesday, September 14th, 2016
Using a new system of drifting buoys, scientists from NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif., will have a much better chance of hearing beaked whales in their deep-water habitat off the West Coast. About 20 buoys will be deployed from a NOAA ship with a listening device suspended 330 feet below the
Thursday, September 8th, 2016
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) released new 3-D topographic maps of Alaska on Sept. 1, 2016, in support of a White House Arctic initiative to inform better decision-making in the area. The 3-D digital elevation models (DEMs) are the first to come from the ArcticDEM project, which was created
Thursday, September 1st, 2016
A SpaceX rocket exploded at its Cape Canaveral launch pad Thursday morning, destroying the rocket and the satellite it was due to launch on Saturday. SpaceX said there were no injuries as a result of the explosion, which it described as an “anomaly.” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the explosion happened while the rocket
Tuesday, August 30th, 2016
A 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck central Italy on Aug. 24, 2016. Approximately 300 people died as a result of the quake, which devastated several towns in the country’s Apennine mountain belt. The Italian peninsula features fault lines created by the separation of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates. The fault line separating these two plates
Thursday, August 25th, 2016
New Real-Time Maps Transform Forecast Data into Vivid Pictures of U.S. River Flows REDLANDS, Calif.—August 25, 2016—Smart-mapping leader Esri today released a beautiful, robust new collection of Web maps that forecast NOAA stream-flow data throughout the continental U.S. Esri’s multiscale visualization of the National Water Model enables forecast water flows in real time at high
